Dallas' Best (and Worst) Quotes of 2017

As always, DFW proved quite quotable in 2017. Whether it was the rhetorical war over the fate of Dallas' Confederacy-tied monuments, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price's trial or Jerry Jones' repeated failure to steer the Cowboys away from controversy, there was no shortage of hot air putting wind in Dallas' sails.

Here are the quotes that stood out the most to the Observer this year.

"I'm going back to work."

— Price to the media after his acquittal on federal corruption charges

"It was very odd because they all had the same haircut."

— Amiti Perry, bartender at One Nostalgia Tavern, about the night in 2016 when infamous right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, homegrown Dallas white nationalist Richard Spencer and a merry band of white supremacists walked into her bar

Amiti Perry via Facebook

Amiti Perry at One Nostalgia Tavern

"They will build a bridge. They will build a park. They will build anything they want to build with their friends' money in their back pockets that builds all that crap, but they won't build anything for these substations. They're building shit to make money and put it in their own goddamned pockets, but they won't build a fucking thing for police officers."

— Frederick Frazier, first vice president of the Dallas Police Association, in February, on the city of Dallas' refusal to bulk up security around the city's police stations

“You’re saying, since we can’t give them enough to pay for their entire education, screw ’em, they can’t go to private school. Do you want me to give them $15,000, is that what you want, so they can go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”

— State Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas in the midst of a winding rant about school vouchers in April

Don Huffines for Senate

Sen. Don Huffines

"Malcolm X says that 'if a man puts a knife in your back nine inches and pulls it out six, it's really not much relief."

— Price on the dubious benefits of the city of Dallas' new cite-and-release policy for marijuana possession

"In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un."

— Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas anointing President Donald Trump in August as God's executioner on Earth

Robert Jeffress via Twitter

President Donald Trump and Robert Jeffress

"I was unintentionally incorrect yesterday when I said that the victim's vehicle was backing down the road. In fact, according to the video that I viewed, the vehicle was moving forward as the officers approached."

— Balch Springs police Chief Jonathan Haber in May, clarifying that the car full of teenagers carrying teenager Jordan Edwards was moving away from former police officer Roy Oliver when he shot Edwards in the head and killed him

"Fuck them."

— State Rep. Matt Rinaldi of Irving after being confronted in May for bragging that he'd called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on pro-immigration protesters in the House gallery

"What we're asking everybody is: Please, don't panic. There's going to be product and there's going to be gasoline; it just may not be what you were used to in the past."

"I am an attorney. I fight for you all, sir. That is my attorney, sir. I love you, I love you. That is my attorney, sir."

— Freshman state Rep. Victoria Neave of Dallas, invoking her 5th Amendment rights and directing police officers to talk to her attorney after being busted for DWI after a one-car accident in October

Ty Bledsoe via Twitter

Rep. Neave failed to follow her own advice.

"The city of Dallas did nothing wrong. I have looked at this every which way, and we did what that referendum said we would do. That being said, this is [the] right thing to do at this point for the future of the city of Dallas."

— Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on the city's decision to settle four of the six police pay lawsuits that have threatened to bankrupt the city for more than two decades

"I want them to have the ammunition to tell anybody that asks them to do anything otherwise or demonstrate during that period of time, that 'I don't get to play if I do that.' This is a workplace issue. I don't want there to be any misunderstanding as to where I want the personnel of the Cowboys to be when we're at the No. 1 workplace we have, which is the field and the sideline on game day."

— Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, explaining that he knows what's best for his players regarding protests during the national anthem

Pro Football Hall of Fame via Twitter

Jerry Jones delivers his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech.

"It's about destroying the United States Constitution and the United States as a country. There's a force that wants to destroy us, and they're just chipping away. You destroy the man sitting on that horse, and you destroy the ideas he contributed to the greater cause."